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The massing on top looks clumsy and the base looks like it's going to swallow GCT in its glassy maws. The base doesn't have to be so bizarre to be beautiful. This tower could be great with some tweaking but right now it does not merit a position near the Chrysler or GCT.

I have to disagree with you, I think the base compliments GCT in a clean modern approach.

The massing on top looks clumsy and the base looks like it's going to swallow GCT in its glassy maws. The base doesn't have to be so bizarre to be beautiful. This tower could be great with some tweaking but right now it does not merit a position near the Chrysler or GCT.

Indeed the culmination of this looks very graceless and made even more clumsy by its elegant historic neighbor. This thing is going to have the same effect as 60 Wall St (whose aesthetics are brought down by nearby much more impressive competition; 70 Pine St, 40 Wall St). Not a bad tower in its own right but its culmination next to a legend it looks infantile, amateurish and just plain bad, height will in no way change that. Make it bulky and short and flat at 600' instead of this obtrusive and graceless assembly at 1500'. Send the design back to the architects and more intently show them its neighbor across GCT.

Guys, don't worry. First the glass screen around the spire will be value engineered out, then too the spire, and then we can all be happy when it ends up as yet another boxy stump with zero aspirations whatsoever. After all, no massing is better than awkward massing, ya?

Grand Central's supertall neighbor moved one step closer to reality today, as City Planning unanimously approved SL Green's plans for the 1,500-foot-tall One Vanderbilt and a rezoning of the Vanderbilt Avenue corridor. Along with the tower, which will hold 1.6 million square feet of office space, SL Green will create a public plaza and make $210 million worth of transit and infrastructure improvements to Grand Central. City Planning Chairman Carl Weisbrod called the Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed tower a "a significant addition to the East Midtown business district and to our skyline," saying that it will "further the City's goal of keeping East Midtown one of the best business addresses in the world." TD Bank already signed on as the anchor tenant.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer approved the proposal in January, so the positive vote from City Planning was expected, despite one man's repeatedattempts to thwart the tower. Up next: a City Council hearing in mid-April with the final vote in May.